On schedule, “North Carolina’s Eastern Region” became “NCEast Alliance,” going fully private after decisions at the state level to move a significant amount of funding and economic development decisions into the Commerce Department.

But NCEast is going about its business without Lenoir County operating as one of its 10 affiliated Eastern North Carolina governments.

“Originally we had 13, and so we’ve lost three along the way, unfortunately, but we still have 10 — 10 of our core counties. The (counties) that dropped out are Duplin, Pamlico and, surprisingly, Lenoir,” said John Chafee, CEO of NCEast.

The NCEast Alliance operates out of offices located at the Global TransPark, off N.C. 58 near Stonyton Creek.

“Lenoir (County) was the last one,” Chaffee said. “Just at the end of June we got notification that Lenoir had dropped out – it requested to withdraw.”

“It would be extremely difficult and very expensive for Carteret County to reach our economic development targets without the marketing efforts of the NCEast Alliance,” said Myles Stempin, Carteret Economic Development Council executive director, in a statement. “It is an expensive but vital effort to track down prospects and identify projects … coming together as a region heightens the message and manages the cost.”

Lenoir County Economic Development Director Mark Pope said the decision by the county government boiled down to essentially seeing how the economic development moves regionally and statewide begin to shake out, and what path appears most advantageous for the county going forward.

“The way the state’s reorganization of their public-private partnerships has been set up, we’re actually part of a different ‘prosperity zone,’” Pope said. “And, we’re just kind of – the commissioners decided to pull back and see how everything shakes out from Raleigh all the way down, to see where we’re best aligned.”

Lenoir County is part of the Southeast Region prosperity zone — one of eight across the state — along with Brunswick, Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Greene, Jones, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pender and Wayne counties.

“We want to be supportive of the state,” Pope said, “but we also have to be supportive of our area, too.”

Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.